Introducing the Slides/Outline Pane

The new interface in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 has changed quite a bit -- however the Slides/Outline pane looks and works in the same way as it did in the earlier versions -- at least on the surface. There are small changes though -- for starters, there is no equivalent of the Outlining toolbar in PowerPoint 2007 -- this means most of the outline tasks now have to be accessed through right-click options -- and I'll show you how you can do that.

As shown in Figure 1, the Slides/Outline pane is normally placed on
the left side of the interface. In Figure 1, the Slides tab is selected -- but to get to the Outline tab, all you need to do is select the tab.

Figure 1: Slide/Outline pane

Tip - Is the Slides/Outline pane not visible even in Normal view? Choose the
View tab of the Ribbon, and click the Normal button.

You can learn more about the Slide/Outline Pane in another tutorial -- this one builds on it, and explores the various outline options available in PowerPoint 2007.

Outline Pane Options

The Outline tab typically displays the title and text content of the slides, as shown in Figure 2. The content shown here is what you insert in the text placeholders of a slide.

Figure 2: Outline tab

Tip: You can differentiate a text placeholder from other text boxes very easily:

Delete all the text in a text placeholder, and you'll see boilerplate text like "Click here to add text" or similar.

Delete all the text in a text box that is not a placeholder, and you'll see no boilerplate text at all.

Remember: The text delete tip that I mention above should be followed with an immediate Undo command so that all your existing text is back in the placeholder or the text box!

Getting back to our outline, you can use the outline pane to change bullet hierarchies, change bullets to titles, and the other way around. You can also reorder the slides, or move bullets from one slide to another fairly quickly.

Whatever you might need to do, the first thing you need to do is select the text for which you want to effect a change. Thereafter, with the text still selected, right click anywhere in the Outline tab of the pane to bring up the options in the context menu, as shown in Figure 3.

Have your ever used keyboard shortcuts and sequences in PowerPoint? Or are you a complete keyboard aficionado? Do you want to learn about some new shortcuts? Or do you want to know if your favorite keyboard shortcuts are documented?